A fund of expertise to sift out the white elephants

When it comes to projects funded by public money, people tend to remember the failures.

Before it was given a new lease of life as the O2 Arena, the Millennium Dome had become a white elephant before the New Year festivities had even started and Yorkshire has not been immune from public relations disasters. Back in July 1995, the Transperience Museum opened its doors near Bradford. Using £8m of public money, it hoped to turn transport through the ages into award-winning entertainment. The problem was there weren’t enough people interested in riding on a Hungarian tram or a retired Leeds trolleybus. Two years later it closed with debts of more than £1m.

And who can forget Doncaster’s Earth Centre? In 1999 the Millennium Commission ploughed more than £41m into the project which was intended to establish an international centre to promote sustainable development and best environmental practice. It also included a pirate ship and a crazy golf course. When the number of staff leaving seemed in danger of out-numbering visitors, in 2004 the centre went bankrupt and was placed in the hands of administrators.

One man who knows just how difficult it is to tell a roaring success from a flop is John Watson. For the last six years, he has been chair of the Yorkshire and Humber arm of the Heritage Lottery Fund, which since its creation 16 years ago has invested £351m into more than 2,890 projects in the region.

“The trick is not just about identifying those ideas which have potential, but weeding out those which are going to run into the sands. In the early 1990s there were a lot of projects, given large slices of taxpayers money, which amounted to nothing. Something like the Transperience Museum, which was effectively restoring old buses, may have had a lot of enthusiasm behind it, but it never got off the ground.”

Fortunately during his time at the HLF, the vast majority of the projects have been success stories. It’s partly why, when every other organisation is facing unprecedented cutbacks, it has just seen its budget increased nationally from £255m to £300m a year from 2013.

“The increase couldn’t have come at a better time. A large number of projects we have been involved in have been backed by local authorities, which are asked to put up between 20 and 30 per cent of the overall cost. Clearly, the public sector is not going to be able to afford to continue doing that and the HLF’s extra pot of money will allow it to take on a greater share of the burden.”

This month John will hand over the reins of the region’s HLF, but he knows that even with the organisation in a healthy state, his successor will face the inevitable difficulty of deciding which projects should go ahead and which should be shelved.

“By the time applications reach the board they have a 50 per cent chance of being successful, but I won’t lie, you do face some dilemmas simply because of the range of projects which ask for funding,” says the 67-year-old. “How do you choose between a plan to safeguard a rare moorland butterfly or one to repair a run down feudal castle when there’s only enough money to fund one?

“The question I always ask myself is, ‘Will there be a chance for them to apply again?’ Quite often you only have a small window of opportunity to save something from passing into the history books.”

A self-confessed railway enthusiast, it’s perhaps little surprise that one of his favourite projects has been the restoration of the Middleton Light Railway, which has seen steam trains return to the line.

It was a project close to his heart and was a prime example of the relatively small scale projects which sit alongside the HLF’s grand restoration works from the recently completed Royal Hall in Harrogate to the ongoing project at Leeds City Varieties.

“Talk of restoring a building to its former glory has become something of cliche, but in terms of Harrogate I would say the Hall was restored way beyond its former glory,” says John, who prior to joining HLF was chair of the Bradford Community NHS Trust. “I quickly came to realise that there is massive public support for preserving our heritage, which often is just waiting to be tapped into.

“Take something like the Reading Room in South Aston. Just south of Sheffield, it’s not one of the most beautiful villages in the country, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have history. The villagers were puzzled by an old looking building which was being used by an electrical wholesalers. It turned out it has been designed by the renowned architect Inigo Jones as a gatehouse for a long-since demolished estate.

“It had been a reading room long before people had access to education. We provided a grant of £180,000 to help restore the building and it is now a real gem run by a group of incredibly enthusiastic volunteers. That’s what the HLF has to be about, giving a kick start to projects which otherwise wouldn’t get off the ground and helping people realise their dreams.”

Nice words, perhaps, but the work of the HLF has also been vital in bringing in visitors who spend money in the region.

“The definition of heritage is constantly evolving, but our job is to help people from every walk of life decide what matters to them locally and nationally and what they want to pass onto the next generation.

“Regenerating areas does improve people’s quality of life, but it also plays a major part in attracting visitors and contributes enormously to the region’s tourist industry.”

For Gary Verity, chief executive of the tourism body Welcome to Yorkshire, who will step into John’s shoes, that will no doubt be music to his ears.

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The Heritage lottery fund at work

The Hull History Centre: Housing family and local history archives alongside poems by Philip Larkin and records from slavery abolitionist William Wilberforce, the centre was funded in large part thanks to a £7.7m HLF grant.

The Middleton Valley Light Railway: The world’s oldest continuing working railway was originally used to pull coal from the pits of Middleton Moor to the textile factories of Leeds. HLF money has allowed steam and diesel trains to return to the tracks with the attraction also hosting numerous school visits.

The South Aston Reading Room: The village’s local history group successfully applied for funding to restore a building dating back to the 1700s. Originally a reading room, the new centre is also now used for community events.

Hackfall Gardens: The Hackfall Valley was bought by the 18th-century Ripon MP John Aislabie after he convinced several hundred thousand people to invest in his South Sea Company. The business crashed, but not before Aislabie had pocketed the equivalent of £8bn. Having suffered years of neglect, a HLF funded project to restore the landscaped gardens, follies and weirs got under way and the site was reopened last year.

Leeds City Varieties: Since it opened in the late 18th-century the building has been in continuous use as a music hall, but time had taken its toll and it was awarded a £2.74m HLF restoration grant. While it is due to reopen later this year, it has been painstaking work – it took one year just to remove the nicotine stains from the ceiling.

The Waterways Museum, Goole: A group of volunteers have successfully restored of collection of rare Tom Pudding boats, which in the early days of the canal were hauled by horses and carried everything from coal to iron ore.